Results from personalization show that it improves the customer experience, which in turn makes businesses more profitable. However, many companies still struggle with implementing personalization correctly. Some are too overzealous and appear creepy, while others settle for simply adding a first name to email subject lines. Some companies are so confused they don’t even try. This article clarifies some questions surrounding personalization and what it takes to get it right.
What is marketing personalization?
Marketing personalization is when companies use data to send brand messages that are targeted to one individual. This is different from traditional marketing, where the companies would send out a bunch of messages to try and get a small number of customers. With modern technology, marketers can now send very relevant messages to their customers at the perfect time.
Why personalized marketing?
If you’re used to traditional marketing techniques, you may be wondering why businesses are now turning to new methods. In simple terms, it started with consumers. After years of being bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages, they began ignoring them.
The research 63% of consumers are highly annoyed with the way brands continue to blast generic advertising messages repeatedly. 63% of consumers are highly annoyed with the way brands continue to blast generic advertising messages repeatedly.
What customers want, instead, is marketing personalization. According to an Epsilon survey of 1,000 consumers aged 18-64:
- 80% say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.
- 90% claim they find personalization appealing.
More than half of consumers are willing to share their personal information if it will benefit them in some way. So how can you use this information to benefit them?
Marketing personalization strategies
It can be difficult to determine what benefits your customers are seeking at any given moment. However, there are three common strategies that every brand can build of off of to ensure they create a strong personalized marketing plan:
- Know their needs. Every customer expects you to know their needs. When they punch a long-tail query into your search bar, they expect content that answers it. If they’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar location of yours, they probably want details on a product. At every touchpoint throughout the funnel, ask yourself, “What does the customer want here? What are they looking for?” Or, even better, ask them. Surveys and user testing are an easy way to discover these answers.
- Remember who they are and what they’ve done, on any channel or device. On the list of things that frustrates consumers, siloed communication is near the top. If they’ve coordinated a date and time for a demo of your product via phone, and the next day, they get an email aiming for a demo sign-up, that’s a bad user experience. Not only is it annoying, but it has the potential to confuse the prospect. He or she may think: “Did something go wrong? Was my demo canceled? Are they trying to reschedule?” Or, another example: They download an ebook, and later that week, get an email attempting to get them to download that same ebook. Again, this is bad user experience.
Your personalization strategy should be applicable to every device and channel, and your CRM should store any information you’ve gathered about your prospect. Try to avoid scenarios where you don’t know these things about your prospects, and aim to have a complete understanding of their preferences and interests.
- Anticipate their future needs. If you have the advantage of knowing their personal details and browsing behavior, you have the power to predict what’s coming next. Think of when you book a flight somewhere. Airlines don’t stop after selling you a ticket. They ask if you want travel insurance; they ask if you want to book a hotel room; they ask if you’ll need to rent a car, etc. They know you’re traveling, and they also know the experience is more than just flying. The same goes for your product or service. What add-ons might they need? What upgraded versions might they consider? And this extends before and after the buying stage, too.
If you know that someone frequently reads your content on social media marketing, you should send them more content related to that topic. This could include blog posts, podcasts, ebooks, and tip sheets. If someone has already purchased your product, keep them updated on any new versions or bug fixes that come out, and let them know about any new ways that they can use your product to its full potential. Personalization in the sales process is like playing chess- you have to be strategic and think ahead.
Benefits of personalized marketing
The preceding are strategies, and when you start perfecting them, tweaking them with more data, your customers start to see the following benefits, which apply to all businesses:
- They get relevant content. Consumers don’t hate advertising; they hate bad advertising. They hate irrelevant brand messaging. Since personalized content is based on past behavior, it’s more likely the consumer will respond favorably to its message.
- They’re reminded of recent browsing history. Remarketing is creepier in theory than in practice. Data has shown that, up to a point, the more you remarket your products, the more likely your prospects are to buy them. The reality is, people are distracted even when they’re buying. Their boss will walk in; they’ll get phone calls. Maybe they realized, at checkout, that they didn’t have the funds they thought. Whatever the reason, remarketing is a good way to combat it. When done right, it’s not annoying or creepy — it’s simply a reminder that says: “Hey, don’t forget, you were looking at this earlier. Maybe you’re ready to buy it now.”
- They receive valuable suggestions. Consumers don’t just benefit from reminders of products they’ve already seen, but of new ones they may not have realized exist. These could be add-ons, upgraded versions, or related content. Once you’ve anticipated your prospects’ needs, the next step is showing them what they need before they need it, with emails, ads, blog posts, etc.
- They get information when they need it. Content relevance is crucial, but delivering it at the right time is even more so. Don’t just think “what?” Think “when” too.
Creating content for each stage of the marketing funnel and being available to respond to customer issues immediately, allows for a greater chance of converting a lead.
Step 1: Defining personalization
Segmentation is the process of sorting your prospects into groups based on shared characteristics, while personalization is the process of using that information to deliver a more relevant experience. Personalization and segmentation are two processes that are often used interchangeably. Segmentation is the process of sorting your prospects into groups based on shared characteristics, while personalization is the process of using that information to deliver a more relevant experience.
The difference between segmentation and personalization is that segmentation groups people together based on shared characteristics while personalization is about customizing the experience for each individual.
You can think of them as points along a spectrum ofMessaging that is customized to your needs.
On one end, there is the old mass marketing approach, and on the other end, there is hyper-personalized, 1:1, marketer-to-customer nirvana. Segmentation lies somewhere in the middle. We’ve been doing it for decades, but now we have the technology to go deeper, to be more granular.
The goal of every marketer is to provide a personalized message for each customer.
The problem personalization solves
If you make your value proposition more relevant to your visitors by speaking their language, matching their expectations, and addressing their unique fears, needs, and desires, you will see an increase in conversions.
Step 2: Is a personalization strategy right for me?
It’s important to consider if personalization is the right strategy for your company before going any further with it.
1. How prepared are you to personalize the experience for each and every customer? 2. How equipped is your organization to take action on those peronalizations? 3. How does your organization measure success when it comes to personalization? The following three questions will help you determine your organization’s level of preparedness for personalization and whether or not you are eligible to implement it. 1. How ready are you to tailor the experience to each individual customer? 2. How able is your organization to act on those personalizations? 3. How does your organization measure success when it comes to personalization?
Do I have enough data about my customers?
If your company is considering using personalization, we recommend having some basic audience segments set up. These could be initial larger groups focused on things like where the visitor is from, what kind of device they are using, what kind of behaviors they exhibit, or visitors who come from a specific ad campaign.
If you do not know who your most important visitors are, it is more important to concentrate on getting data that is clear and easy to understand. This should be done before trying to personalize anything.
Do I have the resources to do personalization?
- Do you have a team in place that can manage a personalization strategy?
- Do you have a personalization tool that supports your strategy?
- Do you have an experimentation team that can validate your personalization approach?
- Do you have resources to maintain updates to the segments that will multiply as you increase your message granularity?
If you want to personalize your content effectively, you need to set aside dedicated resources and put in the effort to sustain all of your content segments and personalized variations. To create a truly effective personalization strategy, you will need to have a dedicated process for personalization that is ongoing.
Which leads us to question three…
Do I have a process for validating my personalization ideas? Yes, I have a process for validating my personalization ideas. I test my ideas with a small group of users to get feedback and make sure they work well.
In other words, personalization is a hypothesis until you test it out to see if it works or not. Your assumptions about your target audience and the best way to reach them are just assumptions until you test them to see if they are correct.
To create a great personalization strategy, you need a process for gathering customer insights and then validating those insights. This process will help you understand which insights are most valuable for your target audience and how they can help grow your business.
Step 3: Personalization ideation
If you have been confident in your audience segments, have dedicated resources, and are already doing basic personalization, you are ready to do personalization. Now you need to gather insights from your data to create a personalization strategy.
One of the questions we hear most often is how to get ideas for customized messaging that will work. This is the biggest area of ongoing work and your biggest opportunity for business improvement from personalization.
How well you understand your customers influences how successful your personalized results will be.
Here are the 3 types of personalization insights to explore:
- Deductive research
- Inductive research
- Customer self-selected
Step 4: Personalization prioritization
This text is discussing the complex process of personalizing content for various audience segments. It is advising the reader not to worry, as this is a normal process that can be difficult to navigate. The text recommends starting with prioritizing which audience segments are most important to target.
The axis is simple: it goes from anonymous (1) to known (10). Optimizely uses a simple axis to conceptualize how to prioritize personalization hypotheses. The axis goes from anonymous (1) to known (10), and can be used to determine the quantity and quality of audiences you would like to target.
The x-axis refers to the size of your audience segment, while the y-axis refers to the degree of personalization required for that audience segment.
Although you might have a good marketing technique or proposal for that certain audience, it only includes a very tiny group of people.
This means that while you should still target this group, you need to be aware of how large the group is. You should treat personalization like an experiment and pay attention to details that may be statistically significant.
If you want to make a significant impact on your business with personalization, you need to target a large segment of people.
To create an effective personalization strategy, remember what you already know and don’t forget the lessons you’ve learned about testing your assumptions.
If you have any great ideas about personalization, it will most likely take some time and effort to get them to be perfect.
Personalization should always be considered in the context of marketing optimization.
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